For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Paypal garnered itself a nice, heavy dose of bad press last year. Apparently, their fingers got just a little too sticky with a non-profit organization, and as a result, they used meaningless bureaucracy to completely steam-roll over Regretsy, basically stealing from them a considerable chunk of...

A lot of people consider the FCC some type of evil organization (I personally never did), but this is one of those instances where you’ll love them. Some HOAs, as in Homeowners Associations, list rules that you can’t put any kind of antenna on the roof of your home. As the FCC states, since October 1996 it has "banned restrictions that impair...

If your laptop was manufactured after 2007, it’s guaranteed to have at least one USB 2.0 port on it and probably also has a SD or CF (CompactFlash) slot on it. Someday at some point the laptop’s hard drive is going to die on you. However you can prepare for the worst by having a fully-loaded flash card or stick with a Linux OS ready to go for that...

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I believe the Internet to be the lifeblood of modern society. Virtually everything we do nowadays- from our jobs, to our interactions, to our leisure time- involves the ‘net in some way, shape, or form. It’s almost unheard of for someone in the first world to go even a single day without going online even...

As far as format wars go concerning digital cameras, SD was the winner. There were a few others in the mix for a while (like the ill-fated xD format), but now just about any digital camera you’d buy will use SD as its primary storage. The problem afterward is deciding which SD speed class rating to go with. Fortunately it’s fairly easy to figure out...

Firefox 13 is scheduled to be released in June 2012, and that, dear readers is when the hammer finally comes down and WinXP will be the minimum required Windows OS to install the Firefox browser. The image to the right is exactly the notice you will get on Win2000 running the the current Fx 12. Several times I’ve had to point out to people that yes, you...

With all the data breaches that have been happening lately, it’s only natural that some of you are starting to feel a bit paranoid about your own personal information. If you’ve ever subscribed to something online, or used a bank, or signed in to an email or social media account, then guess what- your info’s on a server in a data center...

Sometimes I come across a Linux distribution that pretty much does everything right, and Macpup is definitely one of them. The ISO disk image is only 164MB in size and the entire OS can run in nothing but RAM. Yes, really. Whether you boot off USB stick or CD with Macpup, it’s pretty much ready to rock out of the box. The best part however is that Macpup...

Google Chrome, as fast as it is, can turn into an annoying sloth if you never clear out your browser history. This is a bit different than clearing out your browser cache because it only applies to the address bar and nowhere else. Unless you’ve specifically cleared out the browser history before, Chrome keeps a local record of every single web site...

So, here’s the situation… You want to send a text message, but for whatever reason, you can’t. Maybe your cell phone reception is poor enough that you might as well be in a lead box. Maybe you were forcibly reminded why leaving your phone on the floor is a bad idea. Perhaps you lost it, or the battery’s dead. Whatever the reason, you...

Windows 7 gadgets are something everyone basically forgot about – however there are still a few that are genuinely useful and worth having around. From the ones that are available currently, I go over a few and show which would serve to be most useful on your desktop. See video below for...

New York and Pennsylvania had a Nor’easter dumped on them this month. Yes, this month. In April:Ridiculous. Not the video, just the snow. Anyway.. Generally speaking, electronics can handle cold-to-hot (meaning cold and not freezing-to-hot) fairly well, but with hot-to-cold, the problem you’ll encounter more often than not are "stiff"...

The way I’ve got things set up, my Wii is hooked up to one TV, with my current-gen consoles hooked up to another. The latter is in my computer room. The other day, I was loafing on my couch and felt like I wanted to watch a DVD. I didn’t really care to get up and move to my computer room in order to watch it there, so I figured I’d pop a DVD...

For the longest time – and I mean a really long time – 1024×768 was the most used display resolution on monitors, both in business and in the home. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the new most used res is 1366×768. The first (and pretty much only) thing you’ll notice is that 1024×768 is a 4:3 aspect ratio while...

Fasik writes: I Boot up my PC (Windows 7 OS) and all i hear is a humming and whirring of the PC and the screen is completely black, this first started when i was playing a Game, i exited the game and didn’t see any problems, after a few minutes i could smell something weird it was between the smell of something burning and PLASTIC burning, and i...

Some of you may have heard talk that the NSA is building a super data center down in Utah, with the intention of spying on citizens across the States- and possibly even outside of the States. Now, you all know how journalism can sometimes be – sensationalism’s the word, and stories like that have to be taken with a grain of salt, right? This data...

Andrew writes: I have been in and out of the repair/networking business as a solo tech for 5 years or so. I realize trends are changing and I e-mailed some of my favorite sources to ask your opinion. I saw an article you wrote on repairing laser printers instead of doing laptops or desk tops and I have also looked into InfoSec as a potential career but, its a...

Many Gmail’ers are now forced to deal with the new design of the Gmail interface (meaning no option to revert back to the old design, which will soon be implemented across all accounts); it can be best be described as "the improvements nobody wanted nor asked for". Included with the new interface are icons with no text, wide-spaced nonsense that...

How does a small wireless carrier in France get three million subscribers in just three months? Offer a "dumb pipe" plan that gives you everything for only $25 a month, as in unlimited voice, unlimited text, 3GB of fair-use bandwidth and unlimited Wi-Fi hotspot access to over 5 million points, and – get this – unlimited tethering at no...

During the days of the CRT monitor, many a computer geek would place their monitor on a stand which usually had five rocker switches in the front, with labels COMPUTER, MONITOR, PRINTER, AUX 1 and AUX 2. The sixth switch, POWER, was usually in the back. These switches lit up in green, orange or red, and the power outlets were on the rear. Basically speaking,...